Follow Peter Mis and LivingHalfFull.com via Email

Enter your email address to follow this blog and receive notifications of new posts by email.

It sounds rather simple.

And it should be quite easy.

But in reality it’s often a very difficult thing to do.

Loving yourself.

After all, how could you love you? You know everything about you, the good and the bad. Especially the bad. There are no secrets in your relationship with yourself. And that little voice in your head is always quite good at reminding you of your mistakes, regrets, and shortcomings. How could you possibly love such a person?

Maybe love is too big of a first step.

Good relationships take time, especially if that relationship is between you and you. My relationship with me has always been rather contentious. That little voice in my head has proven to be anything but little, persistent in its ability to cultivate just enough fear and doubt to undermine my happiness, worthiness, and the full expression of who I know I was created to become.

Our truth about who we are is really only what we decide to believe, and when we decide the little voice of fear and doubt is telling us the truth, really loving ourselves will never be allowed to happen.

The road to loving yourself starts with befriending yourself first.

True friends know that we are better than we sometimes tell ourselves we are. Friends are there to support our hopes and dreams and encourage us to keep going when all we feel like doing is quitting. Friends help us through the tough times, help us laugh when we feel like crying, getting us up when all we want to do is stay down, and reminding us of our worth and value. The love of a real friend is unconditional.

Imagine having that sort of relationship with yourself?

Life will provide us with plenty of opportunities to convince ourselves we just aren’t good enough, smart enough, pretty enough, or worthy enough. But in those moments we can beat ourselves down and reinforce such negativity, or we can be empowered by the unconditional love we have for ourselves, the ultimate benefit of having you as one of your very best friends.

The key? Loving yourself is really about being kinder towards yourself, compassionately allowing yourself to be fully human. My subtle shift of simply being kinder to myself silenced the voice of fear and doubt, making my friendship with myself possible. I no longer work against myself because, hey, that’s not something real friends do.

There is no better friend to have in the world than yourself. Because no matter where you go in life, you never go alone.

So, how’s your relationship with you? Perhaps today is a good day to start reconnecting with the person you know as you?